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The Greatest Story Never Told: Difference between revisions
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* A secondary character in ''[[Matthew Reilly|Area 7]]'' is a brilliant computer analyst and mathematician, at one point cracking a supposedly uncrackable encryption for the CIA. However, since you can't let your opponent know you've broken his encryption, his highest honor was a medal and a pat on the back.
* This is the life story of [[Alex Rider]]. He saves the world, or at least the country, over and over and over again, and all he gets is everyone thinking that he's a "druggie" because he misses school all the time ''in order to save their lives.''
* In ''Stalky & Co.'' by [[Rudyard Kipling]] the "constructive deviltry" of study Number Five usually ends this way.
{{quote|'''McTurk''': ...and, besides, this is much too good to tell all the other brutes in the Coll. They'd ''never'' understand. They play cricket, [[Yes-Man|and say: 'Yes sir,' and 'O, sir,' and 'No, sir.']]}}
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** It's heavily implied that while the rest of the country doesn't know about Cole's existence, the citizens of Empire City know who their hero is. This is enforced by times in the sequel where side missions will involve people who know he helped specific people in the first game and thank him for it, and of course by the [[Tear Jerker|end of the game]], everyone in the city knows about what Cole did for them.
*** Or to them, [[Karma Meter|as the case may be]].
* At the end of the first ''[[Resistance]]'' game, Nathan is taken by Black Ops and put into the top secret "Sentinel Program" while the Army is left to believe that He died in the destruction of the conversion center. After the end of the second game only a few people truth about what happened. What's left of SRPA, Capelli, and Malikov.
* Despite what Rance has done to the whole world, no one really knows about him. Of course, there are a ton of reasons behind it from a queen who's a [[Clingy Jealous Girl]] to the fact that the entire country had a civil war. [[Sengoku Rance]] ''may'' probably be the first time that he'll be mentioned as the savior of JAPAN.
* ''[[Muv Luv Alternative]]'': {{spoiler|Second Lieutenant Takeru Shirogane's achievements and central role in completing Alternative IV, and even his existence, will never be revealed to the rest of the world, due to him ceasing to exist and consequently getting [[Ret-Gone|wiped]] from the memories of everyone except Kasumi and Yuuko, who had vowed to take the secret of his existence, and therefore that of parallel worlds, to the grave. With all of his comrades dead, no one else will ever know that a certain bratty hero saved the world. ''No one.''}}
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* If the player [[Multiple Endings|chooses the good ending]] in ''[[Singularity]]'', he {{spoiler|goes back in time and shoots himself to prevent his past self from unintentionally saving the [[Big Bad]]. Doing so causes him to fall down, then wake up at the beginning of the game with all of his memories intact}}. He saved the world, and nobody knows it--hell, there isn't even a shred of evidence that it happened.
* The neutral ending of ''[[Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne]]'' ends with the main character {{spoiler|undoing [[The End of the World as We Know It]] and restoring it to its previous state}}. Because everyone else {{spoiler|was either destroyed by said ending of the world or killed during your quest to restore the world}}, only one person aside from the main character will ever know he did it. {{spoiler|It's subverted by the fact that all the demons remember it. And, apparently, YHVH. And according to Lucifer, He will ''not'' be happy about it...}}
* In ''[[Tales of Vesperia]]'', the guild Brave Vesperia saves the world from multiple threats including the designs of a madman and the horrific doom he inadvertantly unleashes upon the world. They also save many people along the way such as the victims of an incredibly corrupt nobleman. The only people who know of all their deeds and are not actually members of Brave Vesperia can be counted on one hand. Granted some of them are very important people but it is implied that the protagonist at least never gets the recognition he is due because of the circumstances. {{spoiler|Namely Yuri allows Flynn to take the credit for most of his accomplishments, and by extension Brave Vesperia's, because this allows Flynn to affect change from within the system in a position of strength. Due to taking all their credit, Flynn gets promoted to Commandant in the end, head of the Empire's armed forces and now has the authority to affect lasting change. Helps that the members of Brave Vesperia are large and by content to let the greater good win rather than claim the glory.}}
* In ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 3'' {{spoiler|the truth behind The Boss's actions can never be known because she deliberately adopted the persona of a traitor. In reality, she was one of the greatest patriots of all time.}}
** In [[MGS 4]] it's revealed {{spoiler|that through Big Boss' actions and saving the world, again, that her record as a traitor was eventually cleansed and she was recognized as the hero those who were close to her knew her to be, with Big Boss himself subject to similar acclaim.}} Solid Snake, the protagonist of the first and fourth MGS games is another example though, since he manages to {{spoiler|free the world from the grip of his megalomaniac brother, and The Patriots (by accident no less)}} and yet not only will no one ever find out, but he was still technically labeled as a terrorist.
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* ''[[Shadow of the Colossus]]'' focuses on a boy named Wander single-handedly fighting more than a dozen giants, all to revive his dead girlfriend. At the end of the game, {{spoiler|Wander gets transformed into a baby just before the girl is revived. She finds him crying, comepletely unaware of who he is or what he's done for her.}}
* One very important plot point in ''[[World of Warcraft]]: Wrath of the Lich King'' is that {{spoiler|Bolvar Fordragon}} became the new Lich King, and nobody knows it. There has to be a Lich King to [[Restraining Bolt|control the Scourge]], otherwise [[Zombie Apocalypse|it would run amok]], so when Arthas was killed, someone had to take his place; but for Azeroth to be free of fear of the Scourge, the people must not know there is another man sitting on the Frozen Throne wearing the Helm of Domination.
* Sam Fisher from the ''[[Splinter Cell]]'' Series can never receive any recognition for saving the world on multiple occasions due to belonging to the Third Echelon, a branch within the NSA that is even ''more'' secretive than the CIA. The [[Big Bad]] in the third game even comments on Sam getting no recognition or glory for his actions.
* The entirety of ''[[Valkyria Chronicles III]]''. Ordinary Gallians will never know of Squad 422's deeds, the unholy alliance between {{spoiler|Cardinal Borgia and Carl Isler}}, and how the world is spared from the devastation by {{spoiler|an ancient Valkyric superweapon}}. To make it worse, Kurt and co are still considered bad people by the society. [[Final Fantasy Tactics|Hm, I wonder why that sounds familiar...]]
* In the last act of ''[[Call of Duty]] 4: [[Modern Warfare]]'', you {{spoiler|save at least 15 million people, kill a major international figure, and watch your friends die. It's written off as missile tests and skirmishes. Only you and a handful of others, either in the highest echelons of NATO or on-site, know the truth.}}
* In ''[[Blaz Blue]]'', during the ten-year long Dark War when the Black Beast attacked the world killing off over half the population of the entire world, it mysteriously disappeared for a year, during that time humanity was able to recuperate and had made and gathered many weapons for when the Beast would appear again and even develop a type of magic called Ars Magus. The reason for its disappearance was because a man called Bloodedge {{spoiler|Amnesiac Ragna from a different timeline sent into the past}} fought it for a year and sacrificed himself, and his sword and red jacket eventually get passed down to Ragna. And you would think that this would at least be told as a legend. Only Jubei knows about this until he tells Ragna, who probably told no one.
* [[Inverted Trope|Inverted]] in ''[[Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories]]'', {{spoiler|at the end of the game Sora and company's memories are erased of their adventures during the game, but '''everyone else''' (Namine, Riku, Ansem the Wise) still remember everything that happened.}}
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* In the "A Girl And Her Blob" arc of ''[[The Wotch]],'' Mingmei and Myrrh have [[A Day in the Limelight]] as a massive battle goes on elsewhere... we get bits and pieces of what's going on there as Ming and Myrrh pass through and the plots intersect.
** At the end, the writer actually credits ''[[Justice League]]'s'' "The Greatest Story Never Told" for inspiration. The next arc has Jason reading a [[Booster Gold]] comic book, if you look closely.
* [http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1350 This] strip of ''[[Questionable Content]]'' is a prime example. It seems to be satire until [http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1406 Tortura shows up again] and Steve starts getting [[Took a Level In Badass|noticeably more badass]].
* It is implied in ''[[Tales of the Questor]]'' that Quentyn's victory in "Hunter of Shadows" is victim of a governmental coverup.
*
* ''[[8-Bit Theater|Eight Bit Theater]]'': {{spoiler|When White Mage kills [[Big Bad|Chaos]], no one will give her the credit. Since White Mage refuses to let the Light Warriors be recognized as heroes, she lets the [[Harmless Villain|Dark Warriors]] take it, as they're the next best option.}}
* [http://xkcd.com/693/ This] ''[[
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** What makes this worse is Alan Turing's conviction for buggery, sentencing to chemical castration and eventual suicide. One wonders if, had his work been known, he might have been given some amnesty and survived.
* For about 10 years, the story of Russian Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was this. In 1983, (during an extremely tense period in the [[Cold War]]) Petrov's new system for detecting a nuclear weapons launch at Russia incorrectly showed a missile being fired by the US and heading toward Russia. Petrov correctly believed that it was a system glitch, but the story remained buried and untold to the Russian public until the 90s, and didn't become widely known in the US until 2006. [[wikipedia:Stanislav Petrov|Link to that other wiki]].
* Intelligence agencies such as the DOD, DOJ, DHS, CIA, G2, KGB, MI-5, SIS, CSIS, DCRI, ASIS, etc. are built on this trope. They can't tell anyone about what they do, but the truth is that sometimes they save the world
* Similarly there are military special operations which usually can't tell what they do, due to security or political reasons. In-fact the very existence of some special operations units are almost certainly classified.
* Terence S. Kirk was a Japanese POW in WWII. Now this is a very undesirable position on its own, but what he did, with the help of a handful of collaborators is secretly made an improvised camera and documented what happened, so that it could be used in court about war crimes. Once he got out he showed it to the authorities, who then gave him a gag order not to discuss what happened, which he reluctantly signed. He then complied with the gag order for many years, but later defied it and published the pictures and his memoir. You can read about it in the book "The Secret Camera".
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* Many of the finest poets, philosophers and scientists of the ancient world are virtually unremembered because no extant copies of their work exists.
* Roland [[Mc Grath]], of the GNU Project. Donald Knuth also semi-qualifies, although he is known by some people.
* The life of Cora Strayer (1868-1932) is all but this trope. She was a [[Private Detective|female detective]] in Chicago who had several [[Mrs. Robinson|younger boyfriends]] who [[
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